• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Introduction Th e Arts and Craft s movement, work cultures, and the politics of gender n London today there survive countless buildings which function as important architectural symbols of late nineteenth- and early twentieth- I century artistic culture. Th ere is the Art Workers’ Guild ’ s purpose-built Hall at 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, which, to this day, houses meetings for ‘craft speople and architects working at the highest levels of excellence in their professions’.1 Th e Hall has a rich history: it is the place where the most prestigious men associated with the Arts and Craft s movement met, in reaction to the domineering presence of the Royal Academy, to forge new bonds of brotherly comradeship and concoct radical ideas about how to reform society through the arts. Th e walls are lined with paintings and sculptures depicting eminent past members such as architect W. R. Lethaby, and artists Selwyn Image, Walter Crane, and C. R. Ashbee. In West London, there is St Paul ’ s Studios, a row of purpose-built red-brick studios with colossal glass windows, a testament to the extensive growth of such buildings in this artistic area of the city in the late nineteenth century. Th is street was designed in 1891 for use by ‘bachelor’ artists; today these famed sites provide homes for millionaires. Elsewhere in Hammersmith there is Kelmscott House, once home to socialist designer and poet William Morris; the William Morris Society are now encamped in the coach house and basement rooms, ensuring his name is not forgotten. A short stroll down the river, at 7 Hammersmith Terrace, is the engraver and printer Emery Walker ’ s home. It is open to the public, and visitors can view historical rooms with Morris & Co. wallpaper and furniture by Philip Webb, and can even peer into a drawer containing a lock of William Morris ’ s hair. In books, walking tours, and exhibition catalogues, these buildings – the Hall, St Paul ’ s Studios, Morris ’ s and Walker ’ s homes, alongside buildings such as the painter Frederic Leighton ’ s Kensington studio home (now the Leighton House Museum, resplendent with English Heritage blue plaque) – are all used as cultural anchor points through which to construct a history framed around the centrality of exceptional male fi gures to the modern art scene. But these buildings hide secrets. During this era, a vast network of artistic women working in the capital and across the country were active participants in this culture. Women art workers formed their own exclusive 1 WOMEN ART WORKERS AND THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT guild – the Women ’ s Guild of Arts – and met at the same Hall for over fi ft y years. Th ey organised lectures, exhibitions, demonstrations, and parties at their businesses, workshops, homes, exhibition venues, and studios, which included various properties at St Paul ’ s Studios, and several houses on the banks of the river in Hammersmith. At these premises, art was designed and made – from bookcases, to stained-glass windows, necklaces, and chess sets – which was sent to customers around the world. Women art workers played a critical role in disseminating the Arts and Craft s ethos of the social importance of the arts across new local, national, and international spheres of infl uence, and simultaneously altering that same ethos to be more receptive to public interest in domestic consumerism. By the dawn of the twentieth century they had grown in confi dence in promoting their own vision of the movement. Th is focused less on an idealistic rhetoric of demolishing class hierarchies and more on a pragmatic cultivation of the public obsession with obtaining ‘artistic’ and ‘historic’ objects for the home. But this was not a rejection of the political: this new conception of the Arts and Craft s redirected the radical potential of art work into contemporary women-centred causes. Women Art Workers foregrounds these buildings, spaces, and the relationships that played out within these sites. In so doing, it off ers unprecedented insight into how women, working across the arts, con- structed creative lives and sought to overturn imbalances of cultural, social, political, and gendered power. Th ese women were agents of change who shaped a range of skilled work cultures (artistic, professional, intel- lectual, entrepreneurial, commercial) at a critical juncture and encouraged new ideas to spread across society about gender relations, organisational cultures, family life, and the meaning of equality. Challenging the long- standing assumption that the movement simply revolved around celebrated male designers like William Morris and his circle, this book off ers a new social and cultural history of the English Arts and Craft s movement which reveals the breadth of the imprint of women art workers upon the making of the modern world. A new history of the Arts and Craft s movement Across the nineteenth century, fear about the damaging eff ects of indus- trialisation, urbanisation, and mass consumption on social conditions and culture became increasingly prevalent. In an era of growing international competitiveness, many felt that England ’ s decorative art tradition repre- sented the state of its society to a watchful global audience. By the 1870s and 1880s concerns became more urgent. An army of architects, artists, 2 INTRODUCTION and writers grew convinced of the need to take inspiration from the medieval past and to design and create art which could temper the ills of the modern world. Art critic John Ruskin was one particularly infl uential fi gure, who lamented the deterioration of diff erent processes of design and making, so that objects could be quickly and cheaply produced by unskilled labourers. He positioned the arts as off ering participants the chance to cultivate a greater sense of personal authenticity in a rapidly changing world. Authenticity was ill-defi ned and devoid of fi xed meaning, but in these artistic circles was loosely articulated as eschewing commercial trends, embracing the natural world, respecting materials, and working collaboratively, across the production process. Th ere was a concentration of interest in overturning the hierarchy in the arts which had – since the Renaissance – prioritised the ‘High Arts’ of architecture, painting, and sculpture above the so-called ‘minor’ decorative arts. Th is growth of interest in fi nding artistic alternatives to industrial manufacturing was matched by a fl ood of consumer desire to purchase suitably artistic and historic objects for the home, as the middle classes expanded and sought to show off their new cultured statuses to the rest of society. 2 Th e 1880s constituted a formative decade in the making of the move- ment.3 Th e Art Workers’ Guild and the Home Arts and Industries Associa- tion were established in 1884, followed by the Arts and Craft s Exhibition Society, which was established in 1887 and held its fi rst exhibition in 1888. Th e Home Arts and Industries Association functioned as an umbrella organisation for craft -based industries across the country. Framed around educating working-class individuals of the benefi ts of the craft s, it has attracted a reputation as the amateur outer sphere of the movement, even though it played a critical role in encouraging greater societal engagement with handcraft ed cultures. 4 Th e formation of the Exhibition Society, the point at which the phrase ‘Arts and Craft s’ was coined, provided important new exhibition opportunities for the women and men whose work was deemed of high enough quality. By contrast, the Art Workers’ Guild, which remained male-only until 1964, cultivated an intensely private club-like environment for distinguished male architects and designers. Together these three groups are heralded as forming the tripartite insti- tutional representation of the English Arts and Craft s movement. Histories of the movement routinely construct narratives framed around biographies of celebrated fi gures such as William Morris and C. R. Ashbee, and their altruistic, politicised, and creative attempts to overturn traditional class hierarchies by forging cross-class bonds between diff erent men, in particular between labourers and architects and designers.5 3 WOMEN ART WORKERS AND THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT Ashbee formed his Guild of Handicraft in the East End in 1888 to put into practice his desire to provide opportunities for working-class men to take joy in processes of making in the workshop, instead of toiling away in capitalist factories. Yet despite radical intentions, oft en because of the costs involved, these men spent much of their time producing work for upper-middle-class and upper-class customers, facilitating the very process they sought to reverse.6 Morris and Ashbee were both members of the Art Workers’ Guild, a group which exemplifi es the class hierarchies which permeated the movement. One had to be an architect or designer (not simply a maker) to gain entry, many members were already friends, and the relationships formalised there fortifi ed a pervasive model of elite artistic masculinity well into the twentieth century. Th e Art Workers’ Guild is oft en used as a barometer for measuring the cultural signifi cance of diff erent artists to the movement. Art historian Alan Crawford, amongst others, has positioned the Guild as having the atmosphere ‘of a slightly Bohemian gentleman ’ s club, smoky and exclusive. It was the most important single organisation in the Movement, and in some ways its heart.’ಟ 7 Th ose who did not gain access in its heyday tend to be viewed as suspicious dilettante outliers, or simply ignored, part of the ongoing tendency to position privileged male individuals and male-only institutions as uniformly appreciated symbols of expertise and disseminators of cultural knowledge. Figures such as Morris clearly were infl uential – those around him repeatedly venerated his role as ‘artistic godfather’ – but this ongoing fi xation with such individuals has distorted the understanding of the movement ’ s long-term social and cultural impact.

Load more

  32

Copy Link